Canon Powershot A80
My specimen of this little gem is closing in on 10,000 pictures, and has been a very useful and versatile tool
A medium compact camera with 4 megapixels, flip-out LCD, lots of facilities, manual overrides and a good user interface. The Canon Powershot was a big step ahead from the Nikon 775. It had twice the resolution and a lot more facilities.
What I learned to like the most about the Canon was the flip-out LCD. People who haven't used a camera with this very useful and flexible device have missed somthing really good. The usual veiwfinder or the LCD on the backside of most digital caneras, force people to use the camera in a certain way. If you look at a crowd of people taking pictures nowadays, you will notice that most of them stretch out their camera in front of them, looking at the display while composing the picture.
Like the optical viewfinders of any camera, that leads to that most pictures are taken with the camera in eye-height, which is normally not the most interesting place to have the camera. A low stance is usually much better for composing pictures and will give you some much more interesting angles.
The flip-out display is perfect for that. Flip it out, turn it, lower the camera and you have your low stance without bending over or breaking your neck.
[Canon Powershot A80]
Powershot = powerhouse
The camera has done really well for me. After learning its fairly simple user interface and getting the grips with the dials and menus, I started cranking out some pretty amazing images with this little machine.Technically they were as good as any picture I've seen from a 4 magapixel camera, and thanks to the freedom given by the flip-out LCD, the macro-facility and the manual control options I could generally get the camera to go where I wanted it and get the results I expected. If treated corretly this is a really fine little camera.
[Canon Powershot A620]
Now with 7 megapixels
I recently bought a PowerShot A620 from a good friend for about 100 Euros. A bargain!My A80 finally folded. The display refused to show anything at all no matter what mode I set the camera to. It's been underwater once and dipped severely a couple of times both in salt and fresh water, so I was expecting the breakdown.
The A620 is essentially the next generation of the A80, and with a higher resolution, larger display, more facilities and better and faster image handling, it can't go all wrong. This is a perfect replacement for the A80, and armed with a 1 gigabyte SD-card I am now ready to shoot about 300 high rez quality images on a trip -- more than I'll need right away, I think.
Now with 8 megapixels
Just to keep you attuned: I actually bought a PowerShot A630 now. It's 8 megapixels and has an even better feature set than the A620 plus a larger LCD and several other improvements.The acquisition came as a result of my A630 finally drowning and stopping to work. But alas! It has since woken up again and now works as good as ever. These amazing PowerShots...